BALLOON CREWS READY FOR ANYTHING

It seems most ballooners are philosophers.

Maybe it is because spending so much time floating in the clouds. When a group of them gather, there are bound to be remarks about the inevitable twists of fate and the unpredictable guile of Mother Nature.

"You can be flying along and see two 100-yard fields that would be just perfect to land on, with just a wire fence running down the middle of it, and Mother Nature will run you right down on top of those fence posts for the entire 100 yards," balloon pilot Bill Chritton, of West Plains, said Thursday evening as he prepared to lift off for a media flight.

Chritton, a former medical helicopter pilot, took up flying balloons eight years ago, ironically at the urging of his wife who has always been nonchalant about air travel.

"I could never get her into flying," Chritton said. "She'd always read a book or sleep on the plane."

That all changed when his daughter began dating a balloon pilot who took Chritton and his wife up for a ride. Soon after that first flight Chritton bought a balloon. Thursday he was in Cape Girardeau for the first time to participate in the Balloons and Art Festival's balloon race.

Chritton's view on the unpredictability of ballooning was just one of many doled out over the weekend. At a standing-room only meeting for volunteer chase crew members, instructor Jetta Schantz tried to warn these first-time balloon chasers that the unexpected should be expected.

"We know where we will be lifting off and that's about the only thing we know for certain," she said. "Dress accordingly. You may have to climb over fences or make your way through a field, and there's a lot of poison ivy around here -- as my son found out last year."

Working to put a balloon into the air, then chasing after it just to take it back down again might not sound like the best of times, especially when you see the pilot and passengers drifting happily off into the wind. But there is a sense of majesty that surrounds hot-air balloons like no other aircraft. Touching that majesty brings its own rewards.

The envelope of a balloon, the part that actually fills with air, is immense and powerful. Crew members stand on either side of the mouth of the envelope as ambient air is blown in by a powerful fan. As the envelope fills, it rolls and stretches like a giant rousing itself from sleep. No amount of pushing or pulling will do much to restrict those movements and it is vain to try.

As the air is heated, usually by two propane-fueled "burners," the giant is fully roused and the actions of a few human beings will do little to impede its flight. Only the pilot has control.

Once the process has reached this point the balloon becomes the perfect representation of one of nature's most basic laws: Hot air rises. Unlike airplanes, which pit the strength of their wings and flaps to bend the air for lift, or helicopters, which shatter the air above them and rise to fill the void, balloons need only to resist gravity -- which gives up without a fight.

Once the balloon is up, it is time for the chase.

Pilot and crew stay in regular communication, with the pilot pinpointing landmarks and assisting the chase driver in finding the best path to their location. The driver's main concern is not keeping the balloon in sight, that's for the passengers. The driver has to make sure that he doesn't run traffic lights or smash into the back of another vehicle while concentrating on the balloon.

Eventually the balloon returns to the ground, giving up its flirtation with gravity. This is the time that the ground crew encounters its first struggle with the balloon. The envelope is as reluctant as an energetic child at Disney World to return to the car and drive home. But eventually the envelope's hot air is pushed out in an extended exhalation and the bright colors and exotic designs are secured within a simple canvas bag until the next time.